The Book

In the book, Ned’s death is slightly more ambiguous. It’s told from the point of view of Arya and she claims that her dad looks different after a confrontation with Jaime. Likewise, Sansa also comments that her Dad’s head on the post doesn’t really look like her Dad - something which also happened in the show.

Whilst things seem pretty black and white in the TV show, there seems to be a question hovering in the book as to whether he actually died or not.

Another thing to mention is that on screen, it’s implied that Syria Forel (Arya’s trainer) is left to die as Arya runs away. However, you might remember that he had just taken on a bunch of guards with a wooden sword and therefore, we’re pretty confident that he probably could’ve survived an encounter with Ser Meryn.

But, then the question is: why do we never see him again?

Well, two theories:

Number #1

What if Syrio is Jaqen H’ghar and Jaqen is Ned?

What we basically mean is the man who was beheaded is not actually Ned, but is in fact Jaqen with Ned’s face.

Whilst it’s thought that the Faceless Men can only change faces with someone who is dead, when Arya pulls faces off Jaqen, it then reveals her own face… so what if that’s not entirely true? Can we presume that there are some exceptions to this rule?

Which means that it is possible that when Ned is thrown into the cells beneath the Red Keep just before his death, that he may have come across Jaqen who was also in the cells.

However, we’re going to argue that Jaqen - a Faceless Man - aka, a badass assassin probably wouldn’t have ended up in jail in the first place, or if he did, it would be on purpose. So, was Jaqen paid off to get himself arrested in order to be down in the cells with Ned?

Why would he do it? Well, it could’ve been organised by Lord Varys, who visits Ned before his execution.

Enter Syrio.

The fact that Syrio is presumed dead is a bit hard to swallow given how good he is at sword fighting. However, perhaps he wanted to help Ned in order to help Arya, and therefore got away from Ser Meryn and went down into the cells to release Ned, wearing Jaqen’s face.

Number #2

When Ned is about to be beheaded, he closes his eyes and begins muttering - similar to the way that Bran does when he’s warging.

Because it’s believed that Ned’s other kids can warg as well, it’s possible that it’s genetic and therefore passed down from Ned himself.

In the same scene, Arya is protected from witnessing the beheading and then sees birds flying about her. Therefore, the theory could be that Ned warged into one of those birds.

The full trailer for season 7 has arrived and we couldn't be more excited...